Modern Opera Productions
Richard Partridge
opera productions, freighted with adolescent political messages, the benefit
of the doubt, or who exert yourselves mightily to find some redeeming
quality in them, are invited to read the appended review of Katharina
Wagner's production in Germany, and contemplate the atrocities you are
encouraging.
Too many critics, including Anne Midgette, writing in today's New York
Times, bend over backwards and praise these productions by faintly damning
them. They write something like, "On the whole this production was not
successful, but we must acknowledge its novel insights into the relevance of
Wagner's operas to contemporary audiences," when if they had the courage of
their convictions. or any backbone at all, they would write, "This
production is but another example of the childish rubbish that has
unfortunately become the norm in recent years."
Read the following description and reflect on the harm you are doing. If
Wolfgang Wagner has his way, she will be installed in Bayreuth, and that
shrine to Wagner's genius, still wounded by the scandalous depredations of
Patrice Chereau, will soon be utterly desecrated.
You know who you are. I'm not going to name any names. Read it, and
reflect on what you are doing.
Dick Partridge
* * * * *
October 15, 2002
Another Wagner's Debut, Turning the Plot Around
By ANNE MIDGETTE
WÜRZBURG, Germany, Oct. 13 -- Senta is the weird girl in school with funny
clothes and strange music on her Walkman. Daland, her father, is a slick
operator who's happy to forge a passport or even prostitute his daughter if
the price is right. And the dapper Flying Dutchman is a wanted man who is
ultimately beaten to death by skinheads wielding baseball bats.
"It's important to me that a work relate to the present day," said Katharina
Wagner, the director of this new production of "Der Fliegende Holländer" at
the Mainfranken Theater here, which opened on Sept. 22. "And I think I've
found exactly that in 'Holländer.' "
Ms. Wagner is 24. She's tall, blond and pretty, and before September she
had never staged an opera. She's also the composer's great-granddaughter,
and her father, Wolfgang Wagner, 83, who runs the Wagner summer festival in
nearby Bayreuth, has been naming her for some time as his successor.
And she has just created a huge scandal. "The Flying Dutchman" is the story
of a ghostly captain doomed to sail the seas forever unless he can find a
woman willing to love him and dissolve his curse. Ms. Wagner did away with
the supernatural: gone were the ghost ship, the eerie undead sailors and the
final redemption. This "Dutchman" is played out in the underbelly of a
German port.
Senta knew the Dutchman's picture from "Wanted" posters. The natty attire
of the Dutchman and his men immediately branded them as misfits: helpless,
trying not to attract attention, they incensed the lowlifes through their
sheer otherness, and were beaten to a pulp.
Ms. Wagner's staging is particularly provocative because she is supposed to
bear the standard of the Wagner family. Her father has been running the
Bayreuth Festival for more than 50 years, and the conventional wisdom is
that artistic stagnation has set in. His own board voted him out in 2000 in
favor of his estranged daughter from his first marriage, Eva
Wagner-Pasquier, a seasoned opera administrator. Mr. Wagner, however,
ignored the explicit demand for his resignation, pointed out that his
contract was for life, and cited Katharina as the only family member he'd
consider as a successor, an idea that seemed absurd, given her youth and
lack of experience.
Conservative Wagnerites, however, adore Mr. Wagner. So it seemed that the
Wurzburg chapter of the Richard Wagner Society had found a fitting way to
celebrate its 20th anniversary: by donating nearly $20,000 and enabling the
struggling Mainfranken Theater to mount a new Wagner production, it would
offer a professional directing debut to Mr. Wagner's chosen heir. One can
imagine the society members running for the exits. Storms of boos,
alternating with bravos, buffeted the production team at the premiere. "The
reactions were very violent," Ms. Wagner said. "One woman said to me, `I
know how Richard Wagner meant it.' That would be a real sensation if she
really did."
The critics did a similar about-face in the opposite direction. Having
arrived ready for blood, the majority had to admit that Ms. Wagner had come
up with a serious production. In the national paper Die Zeit, Wolfram
Goertz compared Ms. Wagner to Brünnhilde in Wagner's "Ring" cycle, defying
her father to carry out his secret wishes. "For the first opera production
of their `brave magnificent child,' the Wagners are to be envied," he wrote,
quoting Wotan's apostrophe of his daughter.
Ms. Wagner's direction, despite some stiff moments, passes the test. Rather
than forcing an abstract concept on the work, it grows out of a close
reading of both text and music.
The larger concept is also sound. In the Act II love duet, the two
obsessive misfits, lost in their fantasies of what love could be, sing past
each other. Ms. Wagner took pains to assure an arriving critic that her
vision was transmitted better by the first cast than the second seen on
Saturday night. And in a 750-seat theater that casts mainly from its own
ensemble of singers, expectations are different from those in Bayreuth.
But for a house of this size, it was a respectable performance. Ralf Lukas,
a guest singer from Berlin, was a lyrical, handsome and only sometimes
forced Dutchman, a role that in a bigger house would lie beyond his reach.
Michail Litmanov was a growly Daland who seemed convincing in Ms. Wagner's
vision of a corrupt, flashy bully.
As Senta, Joanna Porackova, another guest artist, transmitted the
character's obsessive passion with warmth, although the role strained the
top of her voice. As Eric, Senta's fiancč Gilbert Mata showed the making of
a nice big tenor, although he seemed a little taxed by the role. The
house's music director, Daniel Klajner, conducted an orchestra that sounded
energetic if rough.
With this radical direction Ms. Wagner does figuratively defy her father, a
bulwark of artistic conservatism. Indeed she damned him with faint praise.
"My father taught me a lot about the craft of direction," she said. "He's a
real expert at his craft -- whatever you want to say about his aesthetics."
She was speaking on her cellphone from vacation before her next project:
starting school in Berlin. She was guarded about her professional plans,
reiterating only that she would not stage anything at Bayreuth anytime soon.
"People wait seven or eight years to get a ticket to Bayreuth," she said in
what already sounds like a polished sound bite. "They have a right to get a
director with experience."
She's got some now. And wherever she goes to earn her next professional
stripe, she's already made the status quo at Bayreuth look a lot more
interesting.
Copyright The New York Times Company
Paul Lower
but a flawed human being like the rest of us. If Wagner productions do not
move with the time, no matter how peurile they are (the times or the
productions), then they will become dead and fossilised like his writings,
set in a time warp and no longer relevant to present day audiences. You have
got to take the rough with the smooth, it is a learning process both for us
and Katherina.
Paul
"Richard Partridge" <r.par...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:B9D2026A.350B%r.par...@verizon.net...
REP
think that when Wagner wrote Lohengrin, Tannhauser, Der Ring Des Nibelungen,
Parsifal, or Meistersinger there were people running around dressed in armor
and brandishing swords? No, because Wagner set most of his operas in
Medieval times; an age that was 500 years in the past when Wagner was alive.
It is possible to "move with the times" without dramatically altering the
concept of Wagner's operas.
REP
"Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aoi62c$gmp$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
Richard Partridge
following:
[snip]
> If Wagner productions do not
> move with the time, no matter how peurile they are (the times or the
> productions), then they will become dead and fossilised like his writings,
> set in a time warp and no longer relevant to present day audiences.
[snip]
That is exactly what I disagree with: the idea that a work of art needs to
"move with the time."
We don't ask any other kind of art to "move with the time". Do you read
Shakespeare's plays as he wrote them, or with his language updated so as to
be "relevant to present day audiences"? What about Homer? How can a war
fought with bows and arrows be "relevant to present day audiences"? So do
you update the setting, and rewrite it as if it were set in Normandy? Of
course, to be really "relevant to present day audiences" you'd have to
transpose it into comic book form. Do you want to do that?
What about architecture? Do you want to go around and remodel Christopher
Wren's buildings to fit in with modern architecture? What about Baroque
painting and sculpture? Do you revise it to make it "relevant to present
day audiences"? Poetry? Would you dumb it down so a modern high school
class can relate to it?
And for that matter, what about Wagner's music? By what logic do you treat
the music as sacrosanct, not changing a single bar, but debase the staging
beyond recognition?
The classical myths have an inherent universality. Their veiled message is
often plain enough, but to rewrite them so as to make the message explicit
would do violence to their beauty. It's generally agreed nowadays, I think,
that when Oedipus blinded himself we are supposed to think of
self-castration (though that is not the only possible interpretation, and
that is what art is all about). Well, would you like to change it so as to
make it explicit? I put it to you that you would lose a lot if you did
that. What you would have would no longer be art, it would be a crude
lesson in psychoanalysis. And that is what the Katharina Wagners of the
world are doing, except that they usually also tack on some crude and
childish political messages.
Dick Partridge
REP
> We don't ask any other kind of art to "move with the time". Do you read
> Shakespeare's plays as he wrote them, or with his language updated so as
to
> be "relevant to present day audiences"?
This is not a good analogy. The words of Shakespeare can be equated to the
music of Wagner -- it's the most substantial, concrete part of his
respective art. Unfortunately, what's happening to Wagner is also what's
happening to Shakespeare; in Shakespeare's case the words are being treated
as intrinsic but the settings are not. Take for instance the 1996's Romeo +
Juliet, a popular film adaption of Shakespeare's classic set in contemporary
times where swords are replaced by pistols and everyone drives a flashy
sports car.
[...]
> that. What you would have would no longer be art, it would be a crude
> lesson in psychoanalysis. And that is what the Katharina Wagners of the
> world are doing, except that they usually also tack on some crude and
> childish political messages.
>
>
> Dick Partridge
>
It is indeed very childish. I was always upset by having to read "the
classics" in school, which always entailed being force-fed the teacher's own
sick psychoanalysis. Modern day directors seem to operate in the same way;
they don't want people to judge these works themself. They only want their
vision to be seen and accepted. It's too bad that we live in a post-Freudian
society where directors think that every character's psyche must be
extrovertedly expressed in either exaggerated or tailored costumes and set
pieces. It isn't possible to add anything to the characters in this way
without completely falsifying the source material or stating a redundancy.
These characters exist only within the drama; anything added through
exaggerated set pieces or costumes must either be externally inspired
(topical politics), which falsifies the source material, or exaggerations of
the character's psyche, which is a redundancy. It's redundant because, since
we're speaking of something internal to a work of art, that character is
already fully realized in the drama and re-stating what is oh-so-obvious to
the director in the production's sets and costumes should already be evident
to the audience through the accompanying music, words, or action. If it is
_not_ already apparent to the audience, then the exaggeration is misleading,
wrong, and destructive.
REP
Derrick Everett
> On 10/15/02 6:49 PM, Paul Lower, at pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk, wrote
> the following:
>
> [snip]
>
>> If Wagner productions do not
>> move with the time, no matter how peurile they are (the times or the
>> productions), then they will become dead and fossilised like his
>> writings, set in a time warp and no longer relevant to present day
>> audiences.
>
> [snip]
>
> That is exactly what I disagree with: the idea that a work of art needs
> to "move with the time."
>
> We don't ask any other kind of art to "move with the time". Do you read
> Shakespeare's plays as he wrote them, or with his language updated so as
> to be "relevant to present day audiences"? What about Homer? How can a
> war fought with bows and arrows be "relevant to present day audiences"?
> So do you update the setting, and rewrite it as if it were set in
> Normandy? Of course, to be really "relevant to present day audiences"
> you'd have to transpose it into comic book form. Do you want to do
> that?
I have some sympathy with the views you express. My main objection to
recent productions and contemporary approachs to production of stage works
by Wagner and others is not that the producers attempt to make them
"relevant" but that their productions are shallow and distorting. In
principle however I accept that productions have to "move with the time".
Wagner said so himself in his essay "The Public in Time and Space".
> And for that matter, what about Wagner's music? By what logic do you
> treat the music as sacrosanct, not changing a single bar, but debase the
> staging beyond recognition?
>
On the basis of an argument first advanced by Adolphe Appia in the
1890's. Namely that while Wagner showed his genius in his words and
music, and while these are valid for all time, his ideas of production were
those of the mid-19th century and already out of date by the end of the
century. In particular the development of stage lighting provided new
possibilities that needed to be exploited. I think Appia's main
objection to the mid-19th century style was that it was inherently
two-dimensional, with a stage picture largely composed of flat painted
surfaces. Since Appia productions of opera and other drama have
increasingly used three-dimensional objects rather than two-dimensional
surfaces. It is not necessary however to change Wagner's locations
beyond recognition, as many productions do these days.
--
Derrick Everett (deverett at c2i.net)
==== Writing from 59°54'N 10°36'E ====
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/index.htm
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> contains these words:
> You talk about Batreuth like it was a religious shrine. Wagner was not a god
> but a flawed human being like the rest of us. If Wagner productions do not
> move with the time, no matter how peurile they are (the times or the
> productions), then they will become dead and fossilised like his writings,
> set in a time warp and no longer relevant to present day audiences. You have
> got to take the rough with the smooth, it is a learning process both for us
> and Katherina.
Are you by any chance being satirical? I don't get that impression,
but I can hardly believe anyone would seriously come up with such a
word-perfect rehash of the cliches thrown up, not to defend "modern"
productions -- a misnomer if ever there was one -- but to stifle
dissent, which is something unpleasantly different.
How should a production of anything "move with the times"? How
exactly is that achieved? What you are saying translates as -- never
mind if it's crap, it's new. This is the lie that is always invoked
to silence opposition to innovations that are inherently flawed, by
those who have an interest in forcing them through regardless. It was
invoked to defend the deadly Sixties architecture that turned whole
cities into concrete wastelands and packed people into socially
destructive high-rises. It was invoked to justify the rape of the
environment in favour of "planned" development that was supposed to
work better, of traditional agriculture in favour of factory-farming
ridden with drugs and chemicals -- and all the idiocies of postwar
Europe created by self-interest, egocentric "expertise" and political
arrogance, now thoroughly discredited as their results become clear.
All because they were once labelled "modern". Why should one way of
doing things be more "modern" than any other? Who exactly decides
that? The people who are selling it, that's who. Onward and upward,
is the chant -- only don't presume to ask where. They'll define all that.
How does changing the Dutchman's drowning to being beaten to death by
skinheads make a fundamentally mythical opera "relevant"? If you want
a "relevant" opera, you write one. You cannot achieve relevance for
something old simply by messing about with its trappings, any more
than you can make a classic painting "relevant" by smearing fresh
paint all over it. "Relevance" is either inherent or non-existent;
and is a wholly false ideal in any case. Art cannot always be
relevant, and nor should it -- opera no more than any other form.
Very occasionally, as with David Pountney's classic production of
Dvorak's Rusalka (London and Munich, available on video), you can tap
something modern that is contained or implicit within an older work
-- in this case psychological musings about the maturing of a young
girl. But this works only when it forms a self-consistent story
within the framework of the existing tale; and even then, as with
Pountney, it tends to be reductionist, stripping the work of much it
originally possessed by emphasising one particular aspect.
What definitely does not work is the -- very usual and predictable --
sequence of deliberately sensational images created here. This is the
standard ploy of aspiring producers in Europe today, in order to
thrust themselves into the attention of similarly sensationalist
company managers, who care nothing for the works they mount,
everything for the transient effect. (There is a lethal portrait of
one of the breed in Michel Faber's recent novel The Courage Consort.)
Their technique has the benefit of requiring no thought or knowledge
on the producer's part, only an intention to shock. Scandal is what
they want, and if it's at the work's expense so much the better. It
is also popular with a certain kind of audience, the sleek
bonne-bourgeoisie who are spared anything so demanding or
unfashionable as an emotional response. They are much the same kind
of people as their ancestors, who loathed Wagner because there was no
ballet, or chatted to Handel's singers on stage between arias. A more
considering audience is either driven away or -- as your next
comments justify -- denied the chance to compare.
So we "have got to take the rough with the smooth" -- as bathetic a
comment as ever was. Why do we? Who says? By whose order? It's a
learning process, you claim; but this kind of production, far from
being modern, has been dominant for nearly three decades now, and it
doesn't seem to be teaching anybody anything. All it has done is
become a mental straightjacket used to force out any semblance of
"traditional" production. Such deconstructive productions might
conceivably be a learning experience if they were available as an
alternative to all those "fossilized" productions you seem to be
afraid of. But they aren't. There are almost no even remotely
"traditional" productions anywhere today, and few audiences have
access to them. America used to be a bastion, but it has been
increasingly invaded in the last ten years. In fact, far from being
new or controversial, it is Ms.Wagner's crappy ideas that are
traditional and stale. Peter Sellars was doing things like them in
his Mozart productions fifteen years ago. I can recall one Dutchman,
in Cassel, from even further back, that took just as many liberties,
and there have been plenty of others. I could find you any number of
depressing analogues among productions this year alone. A *really*
controversial production these days would be one that let the work
speak for itself, on its own terms. But because berks like you
swallow the hook and spout the shibboleths, any such production
stands little chance of actually reaching the stage.
People who attempt them are vilified for the attempt, the productions
are given scant attention, and the producers concerned are passed
over for future work in favour of the noisy and self-publicizing Ms.
Wagners. Sometimes even the prospect of such a production is shouted
down by the fashion police. This happened quite literally in Munich,
when a music director proposed to import a beautiful and cerebral
American staging. The fashionable local critics and their unthinking
followers got together and applied pressure in every direction,
through the city and regional administration even, to stop it being
shown. They literally threatened that if this "unmodern" production
were so much as planned, they would destroy the present management
and administration, which they certainly could. Their grounds for
this fascist action were precisely yours.
People like you are too prone to talk as if there were only two ways
of doing things. Old way -- bad; new way -- good. Orwellian logic at
its purest, designed to restrict thought. Does a "werktreu"
production necessarily tie us to old ways? Does a "new" production
necessarily have to mean larding the work with slathers of
sensationalist crap? Of course not, in both cases. It is possible to
stage old works in new and revelatory ways without this kind of
rubbishy distortion. It is done all the time, just not in opera. You
only have to look at the straight theatre, which, with the exception
of Brecht-ridden Germany (and only Germany would consider Brecht the
epitome of modernity!) and Berlin in particular, would not dare to
offer up this kind of vacuous distortion. Opera is considered to be
different, and inferior, so artificial that it cannot be produced in
any meaningful way. But this has happened many times before, in
Gluck's day, even, and Wagner's; and it has been proven to be a lie every time.
Opera can be produced well, not in any fustian manner but in wholly
new ways -- provided it is given the chance. A few producers such as
Sir Peter Hall, Peter Stein, and among younger figures Stephen
Wadsworth, are still managing to do this. But because unthinking
modernists of your sort are so ready to regurgitate the standard
cliches, it's becoming harder and harder. The Ms. Wagners of this
world find you very convenient. They are not afraid such "werktreu"
productions will not work; they are afraid they will.
Why the hell should we take the rough, if there isn't any smooth?
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
acdouglas
>[snipped - original post is below]
>Art cannot always be relevant, and nor should it....
---------------------------------------------------------
A quibble with your post, with the balance of which I wholeheartedly agree.
Art -- genuine art -- is *always* relevant. That's one of things that makes a
work of art genuine.
--
ACD
http://acdouglas.com
------------------- original post -------------------
"Mike Scott Rohan" <mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:200210161...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk...
Derrick Everett
> "Relevance" is either inherent or non-existent; and is a wholly
> false ideal in any case. Art cannot always be relevant, and nor should
> it -- opera no more than any other form. Very occasionally, as with
> David Pountney's classic production of Dvorak's Rusalka (London and
> Munich, available on video), you can tap something modern that is
> contained or implicit within an older work -- in this case psychological
> musings about the maturing of a young girl. But this works only when it
> forms a self-consistent story within the framework of the existing tale;
> and even then, as with Pountney, it tends to be reductionist, stripping
> the work of much it originally possessed by emphasising one particular
> aspect.
Some of us thought that it was David Pountney who belonged in a lunatic
asylum.
Derrick Everett
> "Mike Scott Rohan" <mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>[snipped - original post is below]
>>Art cannot always be relevant, and nor should it....
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> A quibble with your post, with the balance of which I wholeheartedly
> agree.
>
> Art -- genuine art -- is *always* relevant. That's one of things that
> makes a work of art genuine.
Especially Wagner's art because it concerns the human condition. Not as
entertainment but as an artistic exploration of what it means to be
human.
michael
Richard Partridge (probably rolling his eyes) offers the group a review
by one Anne Midgette (I once owned a British Leyland sports car of
similar name--quite responsive, but very expensive to maintain. Whether
this particular Anne is similar, I cannot say.):
> Ms. Wagner is 24. She's tall, blond and pretty...
Well, that about sums it up. When was the last time anyone met a 24
year old with much insight into aesthetic culture? However, I'm sure
her other attributes will carry her as far as she would like.
michael--Linux RU# 224791
___________________________________
In a medium where speech depends on software, free speech depends on
free (i.e., open source) software.
Paul Lower
I have read all these comments with great amusement, even the personal abuse
I don't agree with some of the views expressed on architecture or
Shakespeare. A lot of the classic architecture we see today is in fact 19th
century interpretations of styles of previous generations. The Romeo and
Juliet film with Leonardo di Caprio was dire but at least it brought alive
the works of Shakespeare to a whole generation that would have completely
ignored them.
Learning experiences can be positive or negative. We all make mistakes in
our youth, that how we learn. Katherina has to start somewhere. Possibly the
next production will be better.
There is room for traditional interpretations as well as the avante garde.
If we were to see the same interpretation all the time we would soon grow
tired of it. Even Wagner recognised this. Die Meistersinger is about this
very subject. The art form will survive innovation and grow stronger because
of it.
My main objection was the treating of Wagner like a religeous figure. Talk
of shrines and desecration really winds me up.The world is beset with too
much religeous zealotry and it will ultimately be the end of all of us (yes
world war 3 has already begun).
Parsifal is a work of sublime beauty, but as soon as you treat it like a
religeous experience it begins to smell.
If Bayreuth had not moved with the times it would now be dead and buried.
Paul
"michael" <mpresley...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3DAD9A24...@cfl.rr.com...
acdouglas
>[snipped - original post is below]
>My main objection was the treating of Wagner
>like a religeous [sic[ figure.
---------------------------------------------------------
You saw nothing like that on this newsgroup. I trust you're not suggesting
you did.
--
ACD
http://acdouglas.com
------------------- original post -------------------
"Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aokdsi$d01$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
Paul Lower
are both used.
Paul
"acdouglas" <acdo...@acdouglas.com> wrote in message
news:aokel4$3hf$1...@news.monmouth.com...
REP
news:aokdsi$d01$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
> If we were to see the same interpretation all the time we would soon grow
> tired of it. Even Wagner recognised this. Die Meistersinger is about this
> very subject. The art form will survive innovation and grow stronger
because
> of it.
You have misinterpreted this aspect of Meistersinger, which is about
expanding musical form. It is _not_ about retroactively applying these new
forms to historical music. If that were the case then Walther would have
sung a song familiar to the Meistersingers but in a foreign style and not,
as he did, one composed entirely within the influence of these new forms.
REP
Richard Loeb
But don't you realize the world of difference between the productions that
Wieland Wagner created in the 50s and 60s and what is going on now.??????
"Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aokdsi$d01$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
Paul Lower
Yes there is a world of difference, nearly 40 years.
In that amount of time the zeitgeist of the entire world changes several
times.
Wieland Wagners productions were austere by necessity and by being so got
rid of all the old cliches of the past.
His productions were criticised just as much then as the present day
producctions.
The avante garde productions of the past become the authodoxy of today.
I would agree with you that the singer were much better then.
Paul
"Richard Loeb" <loe...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:AxSdnd_oOf4...@News.GigaNews.Com...
Paul Lower
Die Meistersinger is about the nature of art. If you wish to interpret it in
such a narrow way it is your prerogative. I am glad to see that Beckmesser
is still alive and well.
Paul
"REP" <loIr...@Iolrqapq.com> wrote in message
news:fqjr9.8085$dc....@nwrddc04.gnilink.net...
Richard Loeb
someone will right a treatise or something on the reason for the
proliferation of great Wagner singers operating from about 1925 to the mid
sixties - what has happened since then is not good at all.
"Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aokim9$pe1$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
acdouglas
>[snipped - original post is below]
>Look at the first post of this string. The word "shrine"
>and "desecrated" are both used.
---------------------------------------------------------
I might suggest the same to you, and suggest as well that this time you get a
sense of the context in which those words were used.
--
ACD
http://acdouglas.com
------------------- original post -------------------
"Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aokf9f$co4$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
Look at the first post of this string. The word "shrine" and "desecrated"
are both used.
Paul
"acdouglas" <acdo...@acdouglas.com> wrote in message
news:aokel4$3hf$1...@news.monmouth.com...
> "Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >[snipped - original post is below]
> >My main objection was the treating of Wagner
> >like a religeous [sic[ figure.
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> You saw nothing like that on this newsgroup. I trust you're not
suggesting
> you did.
>
> --
> ACD
> http://acdouglas.com
[previous posts snipped]
REP
is a valid comparison. I hardly consider myself to be like Beckmesser. If I
were like Beckmesser then I would shun Wagner, Schoenberg, and others for
having expanded the forms of music. Unlike Beckmesser, I have no qualm with
progressive artists like Walther.
And I never said that this is what Meistersinger is about. Meistersinger is
about many things; this, as I said in my original post, is only an _aspect_
of Meistersinger.
REP
"Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aokiun$h4n$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
Paul Lower
Bali, I thought it was beautiful when I was there.
Paul
"acdouglas" <acdo...@acdouglas.com> wrote in message
news:aokjth$6ue$1...@news.monmouth.com...
Paul Lower
There was never a "proliferation" but there was enough, Windgassen, Nielson,
Frick, Flagstad, Melchior and Lehmann et al.Now there are not enough.
Why do we need these modern productions, just turn on these great
performances, sit back, shut your eyes and make your own production.news:eLGdnXOHZY-...@News.GigaNews.Com...
Paul Lower
I usedto have a Midget too but I got tired of having to break my legs to get
into it.
Harlett O'Dowd
>
> It is indeed very childish. I was always upset by having to read "the
> classics" in school, which always entailed being force-fed the teacher's own
> sick psychoanalysis. Modern day directors seem to operate in the same way;
> they don't want people to judge these works themself. They only want their
> vision to be seen and accepted. It's too bad that we live in a post-Freudian
> society where directors think that every character's psyche must be
> extrovertedly expressed in either exaggerated or tailored costumes and set
> pieces. It isn't possible to add anything to the characters in this way
> without completely falsifying the source material or stating a redundancy.
> These characters exist only within the drama; anything added through
> exaggerated set pieces or costumes must either be externally inspired
> (topical politics), which falsifies the source material, or exaggerations of
> the character's psyche, which is a redundancy. It's redundant because, since
> we're speaking of something internal to a work of art, that character is
> already fully realized in the drama and re-stating what is oh-so-obvious to
> the director in the production's sets and costumes should already be evident
> to the audience through the accompanying music, words, or action. If it is
> _not_ already apparent to the audience, then the exaggeration is misleading,
> wrong, and destructive.
Sadly, this seems to be the case with so many productions of just
about any classic work of dramatic art - be it Shakespeare, opera,
musical theatre, etc.
Modern directors apparently have a real psychological need to
metaphorically jump up and down and shout "Look at me! I'm making
art!"
I can't say for sure where this concept originated. Perhaps with the
rise of the film director-as-auteur or perhaps too many
well-intentioned teachers ramming their own takes on literary classics
onto their students who have returned the favor to paying audiences.
Whatever the cause or causes, the result is the same; many directors
now feel the classic author's role is to serve the director's artistic
vision and not the other way around.
Too many modern directors feel the need to "reinvent" classic art as a
way to justify its existence instead of serving the work in a way that
is feaithful to the artistic intentions of the author while presenting
it in a state of the art, dramatically clear and entertaining way.
Pity that the bulk of the directors out there hell-bent on creating
new art lack the moral courage to eschew the safety of tried and true
(and boxoffice safe) classics and concentrate on bringing new work to
the world's theatrical stages.
Richard Loeb
1925-1945 Here a few to ponder
Flagstad, Traubel, Lawrence, Rethberg, Jeritza, Lehmann, Muller, Branzell,
Thorborg, Melchior, Laubenthal, Lorenz, Maison, Schorr, Janssen, Bohnen,
Kipnis, List, Ernster, Svanholm, Ralf, Berglund, Varnay, Szekely, Leider,
Schluter,Lemnitz, Nemeth, Teschemacher, Bettendorf, Ljungberg, Ohms,
Austral, Olszewska, Leisner, Widdop, Volker, Pilinsky, Soot, Bockelmann,
Hotter, Schoffler, Rode, Hermann-Nissen, Andresen, Weber, Bohme, Hann.
Sounds like a pretty fair sized group to me and there is really no
comparision with what we have today, is there????news:aokmi6$fnl$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
Richard Partridge
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk, wrote the following:
Mike-
Thank you; that's very well put. I'm glad to have the heavy artillery on
this side of the debate.
Dick Partridge
Richard Partridge
following:
> I seem to have stirred things up well and truly.
Indeed, it's fun to stir things up.
Last March I posted a long message on this subject, excoriating these horrid
modern productions, and nobody responded. The silence was deafening. They
were all too busy debating whether Wagner was responsible for the Holocaust.
Here's a warning to one and all: it would take very little encouragement
from anyone in the newsgroup to induce me to post it again!
> I have read all these comments with great amusement, even the personal abuse
> I don't agree with some of the views expressed on architecture or
> Shakespeare. A lot of the classic architecture we see today is in fact 19th
> century interpretations of styles of previous generations. The Romeo and
> Juliet film with Leonardo di Caprio was dire but at least it brought alive
> the works of Shakespeare to a whole generation that would have completely
> ignored them.
Sometimes these reworkings of older works of art are well done, and I have
no problem with that. I'm thinking of the movie "Carmen Jones," in which
Bizet's opera was transposed to the black community in the United States. I
thought it was successful. Of course, nothing essential to the story line
was changed; it was still perfectly recognizable. I don't recall any
attempts to freight it with psychoanalytical or political baggage.
> Learning experiences can be positive or negative. We all make mistakes in
> our youth, that how we learn. Katherina has to start somewhere. Possibly the
> next production will be better.
Very well, but isn't it a bit much to let her experiment with an entire
opera production? That's like President Kennedy saying he saw no reason why
his younger brother shouldn't have some experience as Attorney General
before starting to practice law.
> There is room for traditional interpretations as well as the avante garde.
> If we were to see the same interpretation all the time we would soon grow
> tired of it.
The modern productions would be somewhat less objectionable (at least to me)
if they were few and far between, rather than the norm as they are nowadays.
> Even Wagner recognised this. Die Meistersinger is about this
> very subject. The art form will survive innovation and grow stronger because
> of it.
Wagner was a great innovator himself, and it's true that "Die Meistersinger"
deals with that theme. But let's remember that Wagner wrote new operas
(just as Walther composed a new song). He didn't go around distorting the
works of others. (It was Beckmesser who did that!) Of course, people are
still writing new operas today, though for some reason they don't seem to be
performed so often. By all means listen to them if they are your cup of
tea.
> My main objection was the treating of Wagner like a religeous figure. Talk
> of shrines and desecration really winds me up.The world is beset with too
> much religeous zealotry and it will ultimately be the end of all of us (yes
> world war 3 has already begun).
Will it help if I expressly disavow any religious intent when I called
Bayreuth a "shrine?" And that I meant it only as a figure of speech when I
talked about a shrine being "desecrated?"
> Parsifal is a work of sublime beauty, but as soon as you treat it like a
> religeous experience it begins to smell.
> If Bayreuth had not moved with the times it would now be dead and buried.
> Paul
> "michael" <mpresley...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:3DAD9A24...@cfl.rr.com...
>>
>>
>> Richard Partridge (probably rolling his eyes) offers the group a review
>> by one Anne Midgette (I once owned a British Leyland sports car of
>> similar name--quite responsive, but very expensive to maintain.
(These sexist asides are going to get us all in trouble!)
>> Whether
>> this particular Anne is similar, I cannot say.):
>>
>>> Ms. Wagner is 24. She's tall, blond and pretty...
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, that about sums it up. When was the last time anyone met a 24
>> year old with much insight into aesthetic culture? However, I'm sure
>> her other attributes will carry her as far as she would like.
(Enough already!)
Mike Scott Rohan
from "acdouglas" <acdo...@acdouglas.com> contains these words:
{snip}
> A quibble with your post, with the balance of which I wholeheartedly agree.
> Art -- genuine art -- is *always* relevant. That's one of things that makes a
> work of art genuine.
I understand where you're coming from, as they say, and I would
agree; but I think that is a rather wider definition of "relevant"
than is being applied here. Perhaps I should have said "Art cannot
always have intense *contemporary* relevance". The contemporary
relevance of a nice fleshy Rubens mythological scene, or Grunewald's
tormented Isenheim altarpiece, or a medieval miracle play, is at best
limited; they have all been more relevant than they are now. But that
is no reason for repainting them in modern dress, or restaging the
play to reflect not the Christian mythos but the problems of our
inner cities. It could be done; it might even highlight specific
aspects of these works that are more contemporary than they at first
appear. But it will always betray their actual nature, their identity.
Modern opera production's definition of "relevance" is roughly the
same one they applied in early Soviet Russia, when "Tosca" was
rewritten as "The Struggle for the Commune". This kind of "relevance"
involves rejigging the externals of the work to fit a particular set
of nominally contemporary shibboleths, without the least regard for
its actual nature or identity. By definition this has to be a shallow
exercise, not the evocation of a subtext but the superimposition of a
supertext which originates in the mediocre preoccupations of the producer.
Real relevance, which is to say universal and timeless human
relevance, is far more powerful than mere contemporary relevance;
and, as you say, all real art retains it -- provided its identity is
not attacked, concealed or simply defaced. In the quest for
contemporary relevance, the real and universal relevance you rightly
cite is generally the first casualty.
Cheers,
Mike
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
acdouglas
>[snipped - original post is below]
>In the quest for contemporary relevance, the real
>and universal relevance...is generally the first casualty.
---------------------------------------------------------
As you have defined "contemporary relevance", that's almost exactly right.
Nitpicking, I would alter but a single word to make it exactly right: "In the
quest for contemporary relevance, the TIMELESS and universal relevance...is
generally the first casualty."
--
ACD
http://acdouglas.com
------------------- original post -------------------
"Mike Scott Rohan" <mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:200210170...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk...
JimBodge
> On Wed, 16 Oct 2002 13:54:53 +0200, Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
> > "Relevance" is either inherent or non-existent; and is a wholly
> > false ideal in any case. Art cannot always be relevant, and nor should
> > it -- opera no more than any other form. Very occasionally, as with
> > David Pountney's classic production of Dvorak's Rusalka (London and
> > Munich, available on video), you can tap something modern that is
> > contained or implicit within an older work -- in this case psychological
> > musings about the maturing of a young girl. But this works only when it
> > forms a self-consistent story within the framework of the existing tale;
> > and even then, as with Pountney, it tends to be reductionist, stripping
> > the work of much it originally possessed by emphasising one particular
> > aspect.
>
> Some of us thought that it was David Pountney who belonged in a lunatic
> asylum.
Lord, that RUSALKA is just about my favorite opera video. I "learned"
the opera from watching it and think it is enthralling. I could see
through the psychological staging back to the myth instantly. In any
case, of course; RUSALKA is one of the truly great operas.
JimBodge
> > I don't agree with some of the views expressed on architecture or
> > Shakespeare. A lot of the classic architecture we see today is in fact 19th
> > century interpretations of styles of previous generations. The Romeo and
> > Juliet film with Leonardo di Caprio was dire but at least it brought alive
> > the works of Shakespeare to a whole generation that would have completely
> > ignored them.
>
>
> Sometimes these reworkings of older works of art are well done, and I have
> no problem with that. I'm thinking of the movie "Carmen Jones," in which
> Bizet's opera was transposed to the black community in the United States. I
> thought it was successful. Of course, nothing essential to the story line
> was changed; it was still perfectly recognizable. I don't recall any
> attempts to freight it with psychoanalytical or political baggage.
is an adaptation of ROMEO AND JULIET. In neither case is the
original text being used, and in the former case, Bizet's music has
been much adapted. These examples don't mesh well with those
involving modern "reinterpretations" that nevertheless stick to the
music and text.
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Paul Lower" <pa...@lowerp.freeserve.co.uk> contains these words:
> I seem to have stirred things up well and truly.
Quieta non movere. But this is by nature quite a quiet group
precisely because there isn't too much terribly urgent to say about
Wagner, unless and until the Wagner=Hitler brigade intrude. And they
are annoying and (mostly) ignorant, rather than interesting or
illuminating, ranting rather than contributing and totally
uninterested in anything anyone else has to say. Does a group have to
be stirred up? Sometimes it's rather pleasant to abandon other groups
presently boiling over with off-topic frothings about Iraq or
wherever and just exchange some quiet remarks about Wagner. If you
have strong feelings about something, by all means introduce them
strongly, and be prepared for a strong response. But stirring for the
sake of stirring is a pretty pointless exercise.
> I have read all these comments with great amusement, even the personal abuse
By which I presume you mean my reference to "berks like you". Believe
me, worse gets said here. Not that I like that; I do believe it's
possible to debate without insults, even mild ones, and I should
probably have restrained myself here. I apologise. But I stand by the
sentiment. I believe it's the readiness of people like you to
express, or parrot, what are by now cliched palliatives that so
stifles the legitimate criticism of productions. About the only one
you missed was Wagner's own and incessantly evoked "Kinder, schafft
neues!" But those who quote it so readily always forget to complete
it. He added "But be sure the new is better than the old!" Mere
newness or modernity is not a reason for accepting something, but for
questioning it all the more strongly.
And any pious hope that 24-year-old Fraulein Wagner will somehow
change and grow up is unlikely to materialise if we're required to
accept and applaud everything she does with lamb-like tolerance. If
there's to be a learning curve, there must also be value judgements
and marking down, failure standards and trenchant criticism,
preferably constructive but not necessarily. Sometimes there is
nothing on which to construct, and the only response is the bird.
Otherwise she will just go on churning out the same highly unoriginal
stuff in rigid and lifeless conformity to today's fashion.
Cheers,
Mike
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
From Little, Brown, out now -- Shadow of the Seer, the sixth Winter
of the World novel
Visit my site at www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mike.scott.rohan
michael
> Hi Michael
> I usedto have a Midget too but I got tired of having to break my legs to get
> into it.
It took me about a week to learn how to appropraitely contort. I
remember the thing having a trunk...uh...er... a boot just about big
enough for a gallon container. Quite useful since the car was always
overheating in the Florida summer. I'd carry spare coolant in an old
milk jug for those emergencies when the radiator would "blow off".
In order to turn on the heat you had to stop, get out, open the
hood...uh...er... the bonnet, and throw a lever--a real modern example
of British engineering!
I was gratified when, some years later, I heard they had gone out of
business.
michael--Linux RU# 224791
Richard Partridge
following:
[snip]
>
> But CARMEN JONES is an adaptation of CARMEN, just as WEST SIDE STORY
> is an adaptation of ROMEO AND JULIET. In neither case is the
> original text being used, and in the former case, Bizet's music has
> been much adapted. These examples don't mesh well with those
> involving modern "reinterpretations" that nevertheless stick to the
> music and text.
>
>
[snip]
I think that's right, and therefore "Carmen Jones" was not a good example of
what we were talking about.
Dick Partridge
Mike Scott Rohan
from bo...@boston.quik.com (JimBodge) contains these words:
{snip}
> Lord, that RUSALKA is just about my favorite opera video. I "learned"
> the opera from watching it and think it is enthralling. I could see
> through the psychological staging back to the myth instantly. In any
> case, of course; RUSALKA is one of the truly great operas.
I love it too. It's still current at the ENO, and I've seen it live
twice or three times now, once with Richard Hickox conducting
superbly. Like the best of Pountney's productions, it has a sinister
magic all its own, and is certainly more effective than the old
papier-mache and chicken-wire foliage settings, or even the current
Prague National Theatre production, which uses Art-Nouveau style
drapes. Its succes goes beyond appearances, of course; it succeeds
precisely because it is not a random stream of shock images, but
carefully thought through and above all self-consistent. It matches
the myth not with superimposed twaddle, but with a corresponding
psychodrama which does not replace or obscure the original. Somebody
seeing it for the first time would not lose Dvorak's creation beneath
the new interpretation.
Nonetheless I believe it's still a reduction. The Rusalka story and
Dvorak's musical expression of it is a lot broader and deeper than
that psychodrama -- and it's no accident that Bruno Bettelheim, on
whose "The Uses of Enchantment" Pountney based it, has been shown to
be pretty much a charlatan. People of his stamp are very good at
"reducing" myth for the unimaginative, like Erich von Daniken
"explaining" Sindbad's Roc as a helicopter. Pountney's production is
healthy as an alternative, but there should always be less partial
versions around. Which, outside Prague, there don't seem to be.
Cheers,
Mike
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Mike Scott Rohan
from michael <mpresley...@cfl.rr.com> contains these words:
> Paul Lower wrote:
To be fair, it was built as a rock-bottom priced sporty little
runabout when cars of any sort were relatively far more expensive
than they are now, especially in economically exhausted Britain of
the 1950s. It and its cousin the Austin-Healey Sprite (known as
FrogEye from the position of its headlights) were meant to be things
teenagers and students could afford and maintain. Hence the primitive
facilities; if you wanted to carry serious luggage you did so on an
external rack fitted above the boot. And it was certainly never meant
to take the heat of a Florida summer, something wholly unknown here;
I'm surprised it ran at all. *I* nearly explode there, let alone a radiator!
Yet they are remarkably enduring little cars. My sister -- admittedly
very small! -- ran one until a few years ago, getting parts from
specialist dealers and societies; you could just about build yourself
one from scratch, and I might have if I wasn't too tall.*
They never entirely went out of business, though; just got sucked
into the bottomless pit of mergers that swallowed the British car
industry in the 60s. The name survived as badge engineering, and has
come back to life in its own right on a really nice limited-edition
sports car in recent years, much more sophisticated but still
relatively affordable.
Cheers,
Mike
*Mind you, I did fit into one with two stunning girls once; no, not
like that. They were driving me back home from Aylesbury to Oxford,
about an hour's drive, and I thought I'd get one of them on my lap.
No such luck; she fitted neatly into the space behind the seats, and
proceeded to breathe seductively down my neck all journey, knowing I
hadn't got room to turn around. I had trouble getting out, for all
manner of reasons.
michael
> To be fair, it was built as a rock-bottom priced sporty little
> runabout when cars of any sort were relatively far more expensive
> than they are now, especially in economically exhausted Britain of
> the 1950s.
Actually, of all the cars I've owned my MG was, in many ways, the
favorite. It became an adventure every time you motored. Never knowing
if you would arrive (much less get back) was, in the words of Martin
Heidegger, an AUTHENTIC experience.
michael--Linux RU # 224791
___________________________________________
I really don't think in the commercial market, we'll see Linux in any
significant way.
--Gates 1999
We have told our sales force to really understand that this is kind of
job one, establishing Windows and .Net versus Linux and WebSphere.
--Steve Ballmer 2002
pat
Rohan's comment about the Soviet reworking of Tosca for propaganizing.
As a reasonably intelligent guy, I can note outdated concepts as I
watch an opera and easily frame them historically without "missing a
beat".
Interestingly, it seeems that RW is particularly, if not uniquely,
prone to having content perverted to fit one's agenda. I think this
is because his works have so much power on the subconscious level that
it can trigger power issues and other issues in the directors.
As an aside, I saw Lakme 2 weeks ago and was slightly distracted by
its ignorant portrayal of Hinduism (the jealous and wrathful god,
Brahma!!) I also think I spotted some French negative stereotyping of
British.
I watched it with a headful of Die Walkure preparing for Virginia
Opera production the following week. Lakme written in 1884/5, had its
tenor drawing a comparisom to Springtime when falling for the soprano
in what appeared to be a copy of RW in the plot, but, alas, not much
good music to go with it.
doth
unfortunately there is many "pc" in modern opera productions. I don't
want to see a black Siegfried or a french-kissing gay Faust at the
"Staatstheater Weimar".
This has nothing to do with Disrimination or Rasiscm...but Wagner or
Goethe didn't write their great work with this background.
Greetings
Dominik
(my English is bad...i know ;-))
Im Artikel <B9D2026A.350B%r.par...@verizon.net> schrieb "Richard
Partridge" <r.par...@verizon.net>:
> Those of you who are inclined to go with the crowd and give these
> postmodern opera productions, freighted with adolescent political
> messages, the benefit of the doubt, or who exert yourselves mightily to
> find some redeeming quality in them, are invited to read the appended
> review of Katharina Wagner's production in Germany, and contemplate the
> atrocities you are encouraging.
>
> Too many critics, including Anne Midgette, writing in today's New York
> Times, bend over backwards and praise these productions by faintly
> damning them. They write something like, "On the whole this production
> was not successful, but we must acknowledge its novel insights into the
> relevance of Wagner's operas to contemporary audiences," when if they
> had the courage of their convictions. or any backbone at all, they would
> write, "This production is but another example of the childish rubbish
> that has unfortunately become the norm in recent years."
>
> Read the following description and reflect on the harm you are doing.
> If Wolfgang Wagner has his way, she will be installed in Bayreuth, and
> that shrine to Wagner's genius, still wounded by the scandalous
> depredations of Patrice Chereau, will soon be utterly desecrated.
>
> You know who you are. I'm not going to name any names. Read it, and
> reflect on what you are doing.
>
> Dick Partridge
>
>
> * * * * *
>
>
> October 15, 2002
>
> Another Wagner's Debut, Turning the Plot Around
>
> By ANNE MIDGETTE
>
> WÜRZBURG, Germany, Oct. 13 -- Senta is the weird girl in school with
> funny clothes and strange music on her Walkman. Daland, her father, is
> a slick operator who's happy to forge a passport or even prostitute his
> daughter if the price is right. And the dapper Flying Dutchman is a
> wanted man who is ultimately beaten to death by skinheads wielding
> baseball bats.
>
> "It's important to me that a work relate to the present day," said
> Katharina Wagner, the director of this new production of "Der Fliegende
> Holländer" at the Mainfranken Theater here, which opened on Sept. 22.
> "And I think I've found exactly that in 'Holländer.' "
>
> Ms. Wagner is 24. She's tall, blond and pretty, and before September
> she had never staged an opera. She's also the composer's
> great-granddaughter, and her father, Wolfgang Wagner, 83, who runs the
> Wagner summer festival in nearby Bayreuth, has been naming her for some
> time as his successor.
>
> And she has just created a huge scandal. "The Flying Dutchman" is the
> story of a ghostly captain doomed to sail the seas forever unless he can
> find a woman willing to love him and dissolve his curse. Ms. Wagner did
> away with the supernatural: gone were the ghost ship, the eerie undead
> sailors and the final redemption. This "Dutchman" is played out in the
> underbelly of a German port.
>
> Senta knew the Dutchman's picture from "Wanted" posters. The natty
> attire of the Dutchman and his men immediately branded them as misfits:
> helpless, trying not to attract attention, they incensed the lowlifes
> through their sheer otherness, and were beaten to a pulp.
>
> Ms. Wagner's staging is particularly provocative because she is supposed
> to bear the standard of the Wagner family. Her father has been running
> the Bayreuth Festival for more than 50 years, and the conventional
> wisdom is that artistic stagnation has set in. His own board voted him
> out in 2000 in favor of his estranged daughter from his first marriage,
> Eva Wagner-Pasquier, a seasoned opera administrator. Mr. Wagner,
> however, ignored the explicit demand for his resignation, pointed out
> that his contract was for life, and cited Katharina as the only family
> member he'd consider as a successor, an idea that seemed absurd, given
> her youth and lack of experience.
>
> Conservative Wagnerites, however, adore Mr. Wagner. So it seemed that
> the Wurzburg chapter of the Richard Wagner Society had found a fitting
> way to celebrate its 20th anniversary: by donating nearly $20,000 and
> enabling the struggling Mainfranken Theater to mount a new Wagner
> production, it would offer a professional directing debut to Mr.
> Wagner's chosen heir. One can imagine the society members running for
> the exits. Storms of boos, alternating with bravos, buffeted the
> production team at the premiere. "The reactions were very violent," Ms.
> Wagner said. "One woman said to me, `I know how Richard Wagner meant
> it.' That would be a real sensation if she really did."
>
> The critics did a similar about-face in the opposite direction. Having
> arrived ready for blood, the majority had to admit that Ms. Wagner had
> come up with a serious production. In the national paper Die Zeit,
> Wolfram Goertz compared Ms. Wagner to Brünnhilde in Wagner's "Ring"
> cycle, defying her father to carry out his secret wishes. "For the
> first opera production of their `brave magnificent child,' the Wagners
> are to be envied," he wrote, quoting Wotan's apostrophe of his daughter.
>
> Ms. Wagner's direction, despite some stiff moments, passes the test.
> Rather than forcing an abstract concept on the work, it grows out of a
> close reading of both text and music.
>
> The larger concept is also sound. In the Act II love duet, the two
> obsessive misfits, lost in their fantasies of what love could be, sing
> past each other. Ms. Wagner took pains to assure an arriving critic
> that her vision was transmitted better by the first cast than the second
> seen on Saturday night. And in a 750-seat theater that casts mainly
> from its own ensemble of singers, expectations are different from those
> in Bayreuth.
>
> But for a house of this size, it was a respectable performance. Ralf
> Lukas, a guest singer from Berlin, was a lyrical, handsome and only
> sometimes forced Dutchman, a role that in a bigger house would lie
> beyond his reach.
>
> Michail Litmanov was a growly Daland who seemed convincing in Ms.
> Wagner's vision of a corrupt, flashy bully.
>
> As Senta, Joanna Porackova, another guest artist, transmitted the
> character's obsessive passion with warmth, although the role strained
> the top of her voice. As Eric, Senta's fiancè Gilbert Mata showed the
> making of a nice big tenor, although he seemed a little taxed by the
> role. The house's music director, Daniel Klajner, conducted an
> orchestra that sounded energetic if rough.
>
> With this radical direction Ms. Wagner does figuratively defy her
> father, a bulwark of artistic conservatism. Indeed she damned him with
> faint praise. "My father taught me a lot about the craft of direction,"
> she said. "He's a real expert at his craft -- whatever you want to say
> about his aesthetics."
>
> She was speaking on her cellphone from vacation before her next project:
> starting school in Berlin. She was guarded about her professional
> plans, reiterating only that she would not stage anything at Bayreuth
> anytime soon.
>
> "People wait seven or eight years to get a ticket to Bayreuth," she said
> in what already sounds like a polished sound bite. "They have a right
> to get a director with experience."
>
> She's got some now. And wherever she goes to earn her next professional
> stripe, she's already made the status quo at Bayreuth look a lot more
> interesting.
>
> Copyright The New York Times Company
michael
> I don't
> want to see a black Siegfried or a french-kissing gay Faust...
Who cares if Siefgried is sang/acted by a black man? On the other hand,
I always had more than a few suspicions about Loge.
michael--Linux RU# 224791
____________________________________________
anxiously awaiting the arrival of kernel 2.4.19 (dolphin)
doth
<mpresley...@cfl.rr.com>:
> doth wrote:
>
>
>> I don't
>> want to see a black Siegfried or a french-kissing gay Faust...
>
>
>
> Who cares if Siefgried is sang/acted by a black man?
I do.
Bryant Fujimoto
>Im Artikel <3DB17D37...@cfl.rr.com> schrieb "michael"
><mpresley...@cfl.rr.com>:
>> doth wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I don't
>>> want to see a black Siegfried or a french-kissing gay Faust...
>>
>>
>>
>> Who cares if Siefgried is sang/acted by a black man?
>I do.
Why?
Bryant Fujimoto
--
REP
news:aouvbp$21ic$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
Because neither Sieglinde nor Siegmund were black?
REP
Tauser
Willard White (who is black) sang a perfectly magnificent St. Francis in the
Messeian opera in San Francisco recently.....and there was no problem
whatsoever in accepting his dramatic portrayal. (since he's a baritone, he
won't be tackling Siegfried)
Tauser
REP
performing an operatic role is that the voice is right. Opera is a world
where young lovers are fat and old, white people sing "black" roles
(Othello, anyone?), black people sing "white" roles, and women play the
parts of young boys.
REP
Derrick Everett
It's more than a decade since Willard White sang Hunding, in English, for ENO.
I thought he was excellent in that role.
--
Derrick Everett (deverett at c2i.net)
==== Writing from 59°54'N 10°36'E ====
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/index.htm
JimBodge
Willard White sang Wotan with Scottish Opera some years ago. He's also sung Fafner.
Paul Lower
I've just returned from Prague (Mozart for a change) and seen that this
string is still continueing.
I have no objection to any part in Wagner being sung by anyone as long as
they can manage the role. The only problem I had was when watching the Met
video of Die Walkure. Jessie Norman was singing opposite Gary Lakes as the
twins. I couldn't resist laughing when the libretto called for her to sing
about how alike they were.
Paul
"JimBodge" <bo...@boston.quik.com> wrote in message
news:c8c3236f.02102...@posting.google.com...
Richard Partridge
It seems to me this is not an easy question, but in the end the answer has
to be that we cannot say to our black singers that they can only play
Othello, Aïda and maybe one or two other roles.
Watching an opera requires suspension of disbelief. Personally, I have some
difficulty accepting Jane Eaglen as Isolde, for example. I've never seen a
black singer in one of Wagner's operas, but if I did I don't think I would
find it any more difficult to accept than that.
Dick Partridge
Mike Scott Rohan
from tau...@aol.com (Tauser) contains these words:
> Tauser
I've seen him as Wotan *and* Alberich -- not at the same time, of
course. Not at all bad, though his voice is only just powerful
enough, and is ageing rather now. He claimed that there was hostility
to him singing Wotan in Scotland, but I think he was making too much
of it; this appears to have been one nutter sending a couple of
abusive letters, which can of course happen anywhere. He certainly
got plenty of applause from the actual audience.
I personally would have no trouble with a black singer singing any
Ring role. I've seen a black Loge (George Shirley) and a number of
other roles. My first ever Fafner, in Siegfried and Rheingold, back
in 1970, was black -- a young (and not very good) Simon Estes, who
has of course sung Wotan. Even the Met has had a black Sieglinde --
Jessye Norman -- opposite a blonde white Siegmund. It did look a bit
odd dramatically -- "Wie gleicht er dem Weibe!" and you worried about
Hunding's eyesight -- but they did resemble one another rather too
well in other ways, namely their bellies. She could only sail around
the stage in a stately manner, and the love scenes were next to
impossible, they couldn't get close enough! Of course, when a
relationship's involved, it'd be better to have them the same race,
if at all possible -- but why not an entire black Valhalla? If the
singers can do it, they deserve to!
Cheers,
Mike
michael
> Of course, when a
> relationship's involved, it'd be better to have them the same race,
> if at all possible --
I can't believe I'm reading this! (And I'm a political conservative.)
Perhaps I don't really understand your meaning? These days I wouldn't
think that it would be at all scandalous to see an interracial couple.
Besides, I'm sure that "the real" Wotan was not so discriminate in his
own affairs.
michael--Linux RU # 224791
_______________________________________
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to
be maintained.''
Tauser
odd dramatically - >>
This does bring to mind a "Salome" in Munich many years ago with Felicia
Weathers in the title role...and the early opening line of some character
saying "Wie blaß ist Salome heute abend" got a terrific laugh. {The line is
'How white Salome looks this evening' ......and the soprano was black}.
It's sort of a funny story but in Germany it gives one a bit of a shiver.
Tauser
Mike Scott Rohan
from michael <mpresley...@cfl.rr.com> contains these words:
> Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> > Of course, when a
> > relationship's involved, it'd be better to have them the same race,
> > if at all possible --
> I can't believe I'm reading this! (And I'm a political conservative.)
> Perhaps I don't really understand your meaning? These days I wouldn't
> think that it would be at all scandalous to see an interracial couple.
> Besides, I'm sure that "the real" Wotan was not so discriminate in his
> own affairs.
No. It's interesting that you should so readily assume I meant
"relationship" in the silly euphemistic sense. As should be obvious
from the context, I used it in its common and straighforward meaning
-- "relationship" in the genetic sense, blood relationship. In other
words, I was saying that it would be better to cast consistently
roles such as father/daughter, sister/brother, aunt/nephew
(Brunnhilde/Siegfried!) -- and so on. Not absolutely necessary, just
better. Too many producers assume Wagner is dramatic nonsense anyway
-- the buzzword is "unrealistic drama" -- without making matters
worse in the Norman/Lakes manner. There would also be a case for
casting races -- Gods, humans, giants, Nibelungs, Rhinemaidens -- as
racially consistent. All-black Nibelungs might well make a political
point, if one so wished, more sharply than any amount of sloganizing.
And where consistent casting isn't possible, I believe, more
controversially perhaps, that there is a case for singers changing
their colour with make-up, to avoid clashes. I'm aware that many
black singers have refused to -- Mattiwilda Dobbs, for example -- for
reasons I sympathise with. But on the other hand, many others have
done so quite willingly where necessary -- George Shirley is one. In
fact I remember him discussing the point, both in print and in
person. He seemed to feel that dramatic integrity was the main goal,
and I agree. A white singer should be equally ready to subdue his own
natural appearance for the same purpose. It need not involve
"blackface" connotations. Of course, in countries with a history of
racial confrontation this is fraught with problems, and might be
foolish to try, but I still believe that it is better than a lofty
pretence of colour-blindness -- for pretence it is, and does nobody
any favours.
I remember a performance of Shakespeare's Pericles in which Pericles
and his wife were white, Marina black. She was a superb actress,
Pericles was also good, but the one place you could not believe in
her was as his daughter, because there was so little rapport of
manner, culture, speech and a hundred other things about them. There
was nothing offensive about it, it just didn't work.
I may have mentioned here before that there was a performance of
Otello by a prestigious all-black US company -- Opera South may be
the name -- in which the Otello had to be replaced at the last
moment, and the only substitute was...white. So Otello was the only
person in the cast who *wasn't* black. It must have looked a bit like
a negative, but it worked -- better than an all-black cast, many of
the (mostly black) audience thought. All that was necessary was that
Otello should be consistently cast as a different and isolated race.
Which one was less important.
One Ring solution might be to cast the gods and other supernatural
races as entirely non-human, with differently-coloured skins -- maybe
even gold and silver, as I've seen done for gods in Monteverdi. What
colour they actually were wouldn't matter then. Brunnhilde could shed
hers as she becomes mortal, the Wanderer as part of his disguise.
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Laon
specific instance was (it sounds to me) the Levine _Ring_ where sleek
New York black sophisticate Jessye Norman and white red-neck
Pittsburgh biker Gary Lakes played the Volsung twins. (I don't know
where they're really from; I just know what they looked like, apart
from looking ridiculous.) And you get get as po-faced and pious about
that as you like, but Jessye and Gary still aren't going to work
on-stage, not if they're supposed to be playing twins.
It doesn't matter which race they are: but it does matter that if one
is white and the other is black, then they're not even trying to look
like twins, not even within the very wide latitude we allow in opera.
The Levine _Walküre_ just looked stupid, and stupid is not a good
look.
It was reminiscent of the movie _Twins_, in which Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Danny deVito played identical twins: it only works
at a comedy level. And even then it only worked for the one sight
gag. And _Die Walküre_ Act I aint supposed to be mainly comedy.
In other contexts it doesn't matter: black Lady Macbeths, white
Otellos, white Cio-Cio Sans, and Japanese Suzannas: all fine. It's
only when you start talking about twins that you have a problem.
And this stress on actors looking the part isn't just about race, not
for me at least. I mind it very much when some fat bastard takes on a
heroic role that they cannot remotely hope to impersonate on stage.
And I mind when they're hopelessly too old, too. I'll take the obese
or superannuated but vocally glorious superstars in recording, or in
recitals; but for dramatic purposes on stage, I expect at least some
degree of attempt to have the cast look the part. Opera is bloody
well Drama, as a great artist once said.
Though as Mike said, Jessye N and Gazza L did resemble each other
physically in one sense, both being aficionados of the cheeseburger
and the Death by Chocolate special with Extra Cream; when Jessye
Norman's Sieglinde and Gary Lakes' Siegmund embrace, I remember one
critic invoking the 1950s sci-fi movie, _When Worlds Collide_.
(Or maybe it was Velikovsky; whatever.)
And yes, I think it would work quite well if all the Volsungs were
black: all that stuff Siegmund sings about the Volsungs being
rejected, persecuted, etc, would make dramatic sense in that context.
As would the way in which Siegfried seems so much like a fish out of
water in the Gibichung court.
But Jessye and Gary as the Volsung twins: no thank you.
Cheers!
Laon
michael
> Though as Mike said, Jessye N and Gazza L did resemble each other
> physically in one sense, both being aficionados of the cheeseburger
> and the Death by Chocolate special with Extra Cream; when Jessye
> Norman's Sieglinde and Gary Lakes' Siegmund embrace, I remember one
> critic invoking the 1950s sci-fi movie, _When Worlds Collide_.
>
> (Or maybe it was Velikovsky; whatever.)
When worlds collide, it is in effect, I guess, pretty much the same as
worlds in collision. ;-)
michael--Linux RU# 224791
michael
Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> No. It's interesting that you should so readily assume I meant
> "relationship" in the silly euphemistic sense. As should be obvious
> from the context, I used it in its common and straighforward meaning
> -- "relationship" in the genetic sense, blood relationship.
Well, that's why I wrote that I couldn't believe what I was reading.
Generally, I think of a "relationship" as something 'initiated' by two
parties irespective of kinship. Otherwise, in the sense of actual
relatives, I typically think using the word "relation". Thus, my sister
is a relation, but I have a "relationship" with my wife.
Anent the discussion in the actual thread, my mind was turning on
Siegfried and Brunhilde, not Siegmund and Sieglinde. The latter were
close relations who initiated a relationship, while the former were
relatives less closely related in spite of their relationship. [Have I
weasled my way out of this, yet?]
As a melancholy Dane once remarked, "How absolute the knave is! We must
speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us."
michael--Linux RU# 224791
Richard Partridge
following:
I think you're missing the point. I don't think Mike meant "relationship"
as the term is used in "Cosmopolitan" magazine. I think he had in mind
consanguinity, as in brother and twin sister.
Dick Partridge
Richard Partridge
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk, wrote the following:
>
> One Ring solution might be to cast the gods and other supernatural
> races as entirely non-human, with differently-coloured skins -- maybe
> even gold and silver, as I've seen done for gods in Monteverdi. What
> colour they actually were wouldn't matter then. Brunnhilde could shed
> hers as she becomes mortal, the Wanderer as part of his disguise.
>
My God, Mike, don't put ideas in her head! What if Katherina reads this?
Dick Partridge
Mike Scott Rohan
from pra...@presto.net.au (Laon) contains these words:
> I think Mike's problem was not with inter-racial sex per se.
I've had a lot of problems with inter-racial sex, but they were
mostly getting any.
Otherwise you read me correctly, and I endorse your comments -- even
if one does have to make more allowances in opera, there are, or
should be, limits.
Herzeleide
for the umpteenth time, and I actually connected. The Chinese
government is constantly changing its policy about Google. Let's see
how long this lasts.
pra...@presto.net.au (Laon) wrote in message news:<4f8f3beb.02102...@posting.google.com>...
Snip
> I think Mike's problem was not with inter-racial sex per se. The
> specific instance was (it sounds to me) the Levine _Ring_ where sleek
> New York black sophisticate Jessye Norman and white red-neck
> Pittsburgh biker Gary Lakes played the Volsung twins. (I don't know
> where they're really from; I just know what they looked like, apart
> from looking ridiculous.) And you get get as po-faced and pious about
> that as you like, but Jessye and Gary still aren't going to work
> on-stage, not if they're supposed to be playing twins.
>
> It doesn't matter which race they are: but it does matter that if one
> is white and the other is black, then they're not even trying to look
> like twins, not even within the very wide latitude we allow in opera.
> The Levine _Walküre_ just looked stupid, and stupid is not a good
> look.
Actually, I think Jessye Norman is from New Zealand. In any case, I do
disagree on this subject. Having seen Jessye Norman perform Sieglinda
and Kundry many times at the Met, usuallty opposite Placido Domingo in
each opera, I was never bothered by their physical differences.
Similarly, I am never bothered when a 50 year old tenor sings the role
of teenagers Parsifal or Siegfried. Opera demands a certain suspension
of disbelief. I know Jane Eaglen is not everyone's idea of a sensual
seductress, but she becomes that when she sings Isolde. At least for
me. I agree, it wouldn't work on stage -- a black Sieglinda and a
white Siegmund. But opera calls for a lot of this "willing suspension"
on the listener's part -- after all, people don't really SING to each
other, yet we accept that they do when we go to the opera. If we
didn't get into this very special mindset (which many many people are
unwilling to do; these are the people who say, You actually like
OPERA?)in the first place, we would find the entire operatic
experience utterly ridiculous.
Richard
Laon
Welcome back!
> Actually, I think Jessye Norman is from New Zealand.
The Land of my Ancestors certainly is the Land of Song, he whenua o
waiata, but I'm not sure if we're big enough to hold Jessye and Kiri
in the same two little islands. On the wider issue (geddit?) I think
it's more a matter of emphasis than disagreement.
My problem with Jessye and Gary as twins was partly the
different-coloured twins aspect, but now I think about it that might
not have mattered so much if only Jessye had ever for an instant
seemed to be inside the part of Sieglinde. Sieglinde strikes me as a
woman who'd been through a horrible time for a long time, biding her
time, and who is now angry as hell, delighted at the chance to do
something about it, and in lust with the savage bastard who loooked
like he might be capable of taking on her husband. There should be
something wild about her, I guess, some desperation, as well as all
the beauty and so on. And Jessye didn't have so much as an eyelash
out of place, physically or emotionally. It was beautiful, it was
poised, and it wasn't Sieglinde.
And quite apart from looking comically incongruous as Gary Lakes' twin
(though no more so than he looked as her twin), Jessye always looked
like a star soprano in a posh dress to me, ie, she played herself.
She never once seemed even remotely in character.
Lakes wasn't much better: he was in some sort of character, possibly
one of the non-speaking parts from the Roger Corman classic _Hells
Angels 69_, made I believe in 1969, but he didn't seem much like
Siegmund.
So maybe the problem is not just that the racial difference precluded
their being twins (except for various genetic freak events, not
relevant here); it's that the characters never actually became
credible, so that there was no chance to forget the fact that they
were supposed to be twins but obviously couldn't be.
Maybe two other singing actors, one black and one white, might have
carried the day triumphantly.
Anyway I agree with you that you have to make allowances in opera, and
we always do. Still, I must admit that in an operatic production, I'd
often rather see a younger singer who looks vaguely credible in the
part, so long as he or she is a good singer with power, beauty of
voice and intelligence of charactisation, than the singer who I might
think would be ideal in a recording, concert performance or recital,
if that singer looks like Moby Dick propped upright inside a huge
velvet tent.
Someone else might say they'd rather attend an opera with a singer who
has the power and beauty of voice, and intelligent vocal acting, so
long as they don't look absolutely impossible in the part.
The difference is one of emphasis, mostly. My feeling is that musical
standards are rising, and it is reasonable for audiences to demand
that top sops and tenors keep themselves reasonably fit, and
reasonably able to portray their characters on-stage.
But opera calls for a lot of this "willing suspension"
> on the listener's part -- after all, people don't really SING to each
> other, yet we accept that they do when we go to the opera.
Yes, I remember someone pointing out that when Macbeth came across his
wife on the balcony saying "out, out damned spot!" etc, he should have
said, "Get in with ye! What the hell are you doing walking about in
the cold reciting iambic pentameter?"
But ... it has to be a two-way street. We make our allowances, but
THEY have a go at giving us something credible as drama, includng
credible singer-actors. You have to be given something to um hang
your suspension of disbelief on.
And welcome back again.
E noho ra!
Laon
JimBodge
Well, she's really from Georgia (in the U.S. that is). She graduated
Howard University, went to Germany in the late '60s, like so many
other Americans, and made a name for herself at the Deutsche Opera,
Berlin. Among her earliest trimuphs: Elizabeth in TANNHäUSER.
>...In any case, I do
> disagree on this subject. Having seen Jessye Norman perform Sieglinda
> and Kundry many times at the Met, usuallty opposite Placido Domingo in
> each opera, I was never bothered by their physical differences.
I agree that physical differences generally don't bother me in opera,
including these examples. But one of them doesn't apply: Norman and
Domingo have never performed DIE WALKüRE together at the MET. Her
partner was almost always Gary Lakes, and she sang the role in NYC
during three seasons between 1989 and 1993. Domingo's first
performance of Siegmund in NY (or anywhere) was in 1996, opposite
Deborah Voigt, who has almost always been his partner at the MET. He
has appeared with her at subsequent revivals in 1997 and 2000.
Norman and Domingo did do 7 performances of PARSIFAL together at the
MET in 1991, when they recorded it for DG.
> Similarly, I am never bothered when a 50 year old tenor sings the role
> of teenagers Parsifal or Siegfried. Opera demands a certain suspension
> of disbelief. I know Jane Eaglen is not everyone's idea of a sensual
> seductress, but she becomes that when she sings Isolde.
Absolutely. Darn few men under the age of 40 can sing these parts
anyway. And large people have romantic lives, too. To object to
casting on racial lines is distasteful, and puts me in mind of the
"scandal" Grace Bumbry's employment at Bayreuth caused - 40 YEARS
AGO!!
Laon
currently in China, where access to Google is being blocked. "The net
interprets censorship as damage, and works around it.")
Richard says:
As I suspected, it was all too short-lived. The "site cannot be found"
screen is back, and I can't post replies.
Snip:
> Actually, I think Jessye Norman is from New Zealand.
JimBodge:
Well, she's really from Georgia (in the U.S. that is). She graduated
Howard University, went to Germany in the late '60s, like so many
other Americans, and made a name for herself at the Deutsche Opera,
Berlin. Among her earliest trimuphs: Elizabeth in TANNHäUSER.
Me:
Sorry, I forgot Jessye's origins. I had read a story many years ago
(Life magazine?) where she was interviewed at what I thought was her
home in New Zealand and I got that confused with her birthplace.
JimBodge:
Norman and
Domingo have never performed DIE WALKüRE together at the MET. Her
partner was almost always Gary Lakes, and she sang the role in NYC
during three seasons between 1989 and 1993.
Me:
The memory really does play tricks. I saw her at the Met several times
as Sieglinda, and I "remember" Domingo as Siegmund. Maybe it's wishful
thinking -- he sings the role better than Lakes, IMHO. Thanks for
setting me straight.
Richard